


Babylon

by PlacentaMilk



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Happy Ending, Heartbreak, I just want them to be happy, Kissing, Lots of kissing, Oh My God, Sabrina gets her third gift on her eighteenth birthday, So basically, but it's fine, i miss them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22408351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlacentaMilk/pseuds/PlacentaMilk
Summary: So yes. Sabrina Spellman is fine, and no, she doesn't keep saying it to convince herself. She doesn't have to convince herself.She's a Spellman.
Relationships: Nicholas Scratch/Sabrina Spellman
Comments: 5
Kudos: 145





	Babylon

Out of everything to come out of the year, you know, finding out she's the daughter of Lucifer himself, and losing her boyfriend to the bowels of Hell in the hopes of keeping the Devil locked in there for all eternity - Sabrina is fine.

All things considering.

"I'm fine, Auntie's. Ambrose," she warns when her cousin gives her that look she's seen from him so many times, that raised eyebrow, questioning her and the very foundation she stands on. Her very cracked, and albeit shaky foundation, but her foundation never the less. She says the same to Theo, to Roz, to Harvey.

Sabrina Spellman is fine. She's the spawn of the Devil and she lost her boyfriend practically twice in the same night, so what? Sabrina Spellman is a _Spellman_ , and she will pull through it, just like she pulled through her breakup with Harvey, just like she pulled through being rejected by her own friends, just like she pulled through... well. Everything.

So yes. Sabrina Spellman is fine, and no, she doesn't keep saying it to convince herself. She doesn't have to convince herself. There's no time to gripe at the panic that swells in her chest in the dark night, nearing, during, and after the witching hour. She doesn't have time to worry about panicking over the fact that she is literally born from Evil himself. She doesn't have time to worry about... about Nick. Or miss his night-sky eyes and the way they looked at her always so openly with love, whether he was on his knees, covered in blood and crying, or in her room at 2 in the morning, or in the academy hallways, or even... when he was begging her to understand that even though he had gotten close to her because the Dark Lord asked it, he still fell for her. That it was still real, despite the Dark Lord's request.

She wasn't angry at him anymore. In fact, she even threw out there, "Let's get my boyfriend back from Hell." to her friends.

They tried. If there's one thing Sabrina could say with honesty about the situation, is that they tried. Ambrose helped when he could, between meeting Prudence and helping her track down Blackwood, he was hardly home anymore. Auntie Hilda was always there to help, because Auntie Zee couldn't be. Too busy with trying to put their shambled, broken coven back together as their High Priestess. So yes, they all pitched in to help save Sabrina's boyfriend from Hell, but nothing came of it.

They tried for two years, and on the days leading up to Sabrina's eighteenth birthday, she finally decided to quit.

"I think..." Sabrina starts off quietly, and when Ambrose looks up from his own book, he sees that she's staring off at the wall. She's not crying, but she looks at the wall in that awfully muted way that he hates to see her in - and these days he sees her like that a lot. Sabrina closes her book that's in her lap and sits back, eyes never straying from that spot on the wall. "I think I'm done."

He already knows what she's talking about and what she's going to say before she says it. "Cous..." he starts, eyebrows furrowing and a frown tugging at his lips. Ambrose sits up from his seat and leans forward, towards her, but she already cuts him off, shaking her head.

"No, Ambrose, I think... I think it's time. For me to move on. I mean I-" she blinks, a scoff escaping her, and now tears are gathering in her eyes. He sees them before she even notices them, he bets. "We've looked everywhere. We've searched for two years, we've read every book, you even had Prudence ask that coven in Europe but... we haven't even come close to anything. Nothing."

The tears escape her now, flowing freely down her face, but she doesn't sob yet. She just sits there and wallows. "The only answer is to... switch him with someone else, but I could barely do that to Nick, how can I... do that to someone else?"

And Ambrose, for all his knowledge and smooth-talking, doesn't know how to comfort her at this point. Doesn't know how to comfort her, or how to encourage her. He has, after all, never had his boyfriend be the living cage for Lucifer... but he has lost his boyfriend, once.

"It's hard, cousin," he says, gently. "I'm not going to lie to you. You already know that it's hard, losing someone you love like that."

"Does it get easier?" She asks him so heartbreakingly open, her crystal-blue eyes suddenly focused on his.

Ambrose sucks in his cheek and tries to give her a small smile that probably comes off more as a grimace. "Heartbreak is already hard. It's harder when they aren't there to let you know that they're at least happy."

He doesn't mean 'when they aren't there' as in they're taking a trip somewhere around the world or simply moved out of state. She knows that. His answer is an answer nonetheless and Sabrina looks down at that, her eyebrows raising in distraught as more tears pour out of her eyes, falling down onto her red plaid skirt.

Ambrose decides to let her be. He stands up and pats her on the shoulder, giving her a what he hopes is a comforting squeeze before leaving the room quietly. Heartbreak and grieving go hand in hand. He would know.

Sabrina sits, curled up on her bay window seat through the night. Salem sits at her feet and she picks at her throw blanket as she stares out the window, glassy blue eyes gazing at the night but not really seeing. She's convinced herself over and over the past two years that she's fine. That she will be fine. That she will find a way, and each time she's told herself that, her heart has cracked each time. Just a little bit.

And now, finally recognizing that she will never be able to free Nick from being a living cage, her heart bursts and shatters, all over again. Just like with Harvey. Like all the mini-heartbreaks she felt when Harvey had rejected her and her magic. Like when Nick lied to her about Amalia, like when...

Sabrina closes her eyes and lowers her head to her drawn up knees, resting it there and sobbing, her quivering lips and stinging eyes unable to go unnoticed any longer.

Sitting on her window seat at three in the morning, Sabrina Spellman is anything but fine. Sabrina Spellman acknowledges that she had never been fine, and that, perhaps, for a long time she never would be.

The next day, two days before her birthday, she speaks up in between her friends talking. "Hey guys?" she says suddenly, not really aware that they had been talking previously.

When her friends look at her, they see that she'd been zoning out, staring at the same spot on the table, subdued and muted like they've seen her so often before. "What is it?" Theo asks her gently, nudging her with his shoulder.

Sabrina Spellman looks up at her friends, looking at her worriedly, and says the same thing she had said to Ambrose last night. Except this time she says it with more finality. "I'm done."

There's no question as to what she's talking about. Theo shares a desperate look with Roz over Sabrina's head, begging her to say something. Sabrina had slowly stopped looking for ways to free Nicholas the past couple of months, withdrawing from their scheduled meeting times, even away from them at school. It's Harvey who speaks up first, nearly exploding the second the words are out of the white-haired girl's mouth.

"What are you talking about?! You're done?!"

"Harvey..." Roz trails off, a hand lightly touching his wrist, but he pays no heed to her.

"Harvey..." Sabrina sighs, finally looking up from the table towards him. "We've tried everything... we've looked everywhere. We've read everything..."

"So you're just gonna give up? Just like that?" he asks, as if he's mad at her, which she doesn't get. He isn't mad, though, she just doesn't know it.

"Harvey," Roz and Theo warn him now, sharply.

Still, he pays them no mind, and he's about to go on, to hopefully get Sabrina's ass in gear and get her out of this depressed gutter, but she says, "I can't keep doing this to myself, Harv..."

And it isn't just the echo of words he'd said to her years ago, it's the way she says them too. Looking broken as she is, glassy eyes begging him to understand that she's in pain and she can't... go on like this, any longer.

Roz leans across the table and touches Sabrina's wrist, to soothe the girl. It's minuscule, something Harvey only sees because he's sitting so close to Roz and because he knows how she gets now, but Roz freezes up for a split second before letting go and sitting back in her seat, acting as if nothing happened.

"We're done," Sabrina says quietly as she gets up from the table, not wanting her friends to see her tears as she retreats from Dr. Cerberus' store.

The group of friends sit in silence for a second after Sabrina leaves, almost like mourning her loss. Harvey is the first one to break the silence, turning towards his girlfriend to ask, "Did you-?"

Roz's eyes are shining when she turns towards the lean boy. "I did," she smiles.

The day before Sabrina's birthday, she spends the entire day in her room.

That's not actually true, Auntie Zee doesn't allow her to do that and neither does Auntie Hilda - Ambrose had already left to go out to meet with Prudence again - so the day before Sabrina's birthday, she wishes she could spend the entire day in her room, but in reality, she eats breakfast with her aunts and goes to the academy.

Passing the statue of Lillith in her true form with the crown on her head, a crow on her shoulder, and a goat sitting at her knees, Sabrina thinks on the woman.

The one thing Sabrina allows herself to take solace in is the promise Lillith had made to her.

It's true, Sabrina had been angry at the woman who was as old as time, but just like with Nicholas, she was no longer angry. It was also true that Lilith had guided her towards the path of Night, had all but shoved her down it, and had jumpstarted the apocalypse, but Lillith had also helped her when Sabrina needed her most. She helped Sabrina take down the Devil himself, had promised to take care of Nicholas, and gave Sabrina her magic and teacher back.

So yes. Sabrina had been angry, but was no longer, and yes, the only comfort Sabrina allows herself to have anymore is in Lillith's promise to her.

She spends the day in a haze, ignoring what's left of the Weird Sisters that hound her like lost puppies and all but bobbing her way through classes. It's not uncommon for Sabrina Spellman these days, as surprising that might be. Auntie Zee gives her a formidable look at dinner but Sabrina will survive and pull through, because she's a Spellman, and that's what Spellmans do. They survive. They pull through.

That night is spent much like the last one, crying at her window seat, and this time around midnight, Salem starts talking to her. She laughs dryly, rubbing her hand across her cheeks and underneath her eyes to get rid of the tears. "Ambrose left, Salem. Auntie Zee and Hilda are asleep, it's just us."

"Then who is that I smell at the front door?" Salem whispers to her back, his meow loud in the quiet room.

Sabrina sends him a curious look, eyebrows furrowed and previous tears forgotten, though the heartbreak still sings loudly in her chest. Salem doesn't speak anymore, and when she's about to ask him what he means, she hears it. A timid knock at her front door.

At midnight exactly, the beginning start of Sabrina Spellman's eighteenth birthday, someone knocks on her front door three tiny times, and as she walks down her stairs in her night gown, Salem follows her, muttering something about smelling "brimstone."

At midnight exactly, the beginning start of Sabrina Spellman's eighteenth birthday, she opens the door to reveal the most horrifying, frighteningly amazing birthday present she ever could've asked for.

Nicholas Scratch stands at her front door, and for a second she thinks Lucifer might've broken out somehow, but no red eyes follow him here and the way he looks at her - his night-sky eyes gazing at her intensely, in love, and nervous - belongs to Nicholas Scratch and Nicholas Scratch only.

Time stands still in that moment, Salem suddenly so very quiet behind her when he hadn't been before, and Sabrina feels her heart break all over again. Before she knows it, tears are dangerously stinging her eyes, and she barely manages to remember to breathe, gasping in a lungful of air. "N-Nick?" she manages to stutter out, her heart thudding hard in her chest and her pulse roaring in her ears.

"Hey, 'Brina," he says with a small, completely lost-in-her-eyes smile.

The air crackles with energy and tears break and fall down her already previously tear-stained cheeks as she flings herself forward at him, past the doorframe and into his arms. She latches onto his neck, his shoulders, and she doesn't even kiss him yet, so much as hold the dark-haired boy to her chest. He laughs wetly against the skin of her neck and winds his arms around her waist, hugging her to himself, crying too. Her heart breaks and mends itself together again, bursting so full of love and happiness and _light_ , something she thought she had without this dark-ensembled boy in her life but something she was so wrong about.

"I missed you," he says into the crook of her neck, almost nuzzling into it, and a sob rips it's way out of her chest. She clutches on harder to him as a result, nails digging into the soft skin of his shoulders, his back, and he laughs harder at it. Like he's making fun of her, but he's not, and she knows he's not because he's crying too, she can feel the wet tears against her skin.

She forces herself away after a moment - although he doesn't let her get far so she settles with leaning back in his embrace and clutching his arms - before looking at him wildly, her crazy wind-blown hair adding to the wild look in her glassy eyes. "How are you here?!" She asks, because it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable, impossible, it goes against absolutely everything she's tried to read and search for the past two years.

He's smiling at her and looking at her like a dying man who just found water in the desert, and her heart clutches painfully at the raw emotion she sees there, able to recognize and feel as if her own. "I can explain it all to you if you want but first, will you kiss me?" he asks instead of taking, because he always asks, because he's always so thoughtful of her and her feelings.

And what she's feeling right now is a fucking tornado of emotions swirling and bubbling in her chest, the air crackling and popping and sizzling with energy as if waiting for them to explode together, so she doesn't even hesitate before her hands go flying up to his face to cradle his jaw as she leans in, kissing him desperately.

The energy bursts and dances across their skin, their magic entwining in that powerfully dangerous way it does when they're together, and it's like breathing, drinking, and drowning in fire. He kisses her back, eyebrows drawing up while hers furrow in, both relishing in the sweetest bruising, burning kiss they've ever had. When she tries pulling away, she ends up leaning in for more and he follows, his hands trying to pull her closer as if he wants to swallow her. Sabrina herself wants to devour, something so expressingly carnal rising up inside of her so she takes his bruising kisses in stride, unable to stop drinking now that she's found her water after walking in the desert for the past two years. Their salty tears mix together on their cheeks and when Sabrina pulls away for the third and last time, she's laughing, and so is Nick.

"Please," he whispers, like he's dying, and she has no right to refuse him so she gives him a chaste kiss one last time for now, because she wants answers.

"How are you here?" she asks again, resting her forehead against his and looking him in his night-sky eyes when they pull away.

"Before that," Nicholas stops her from spiraling into a tirade about how she had tried so long to get to him, always one to catch her before she falls, "Happy eighteenth birthday, Spellman."

She begs her heart to give her a break, the rollercoaster of emotions too much as new tears well up in her eyes again. She gives him a watery smile, remembering that yeah, it is her eighteenth birthday.

"I'm sorry I don't have a present to give you." He apologizes, but she shakes her head because no, she doesn't care, this is enough. Before she can say that, he's trudging on. "And I'm... so sorry about what I did to you. I know that-"

This time she interrupts him, shaking her head again. "No! Please, don't be sorry about that, I forgive you. I forgive you," Sabrina closes her eyes against the sting threatening them, "you... practically gave up your life for me. You lived as Satan's prison cell for me, I know that, and I-" she stutters and cuts herself off.

"Sabrina..."

I love you, Spellman. You taught me how to love.

"I love you." When Sabrina opens her eyes and leans back again, Nick is gazing at her so intensely, still in that lost little way he does in the tiny moments like this. Her lips wobble as she says it, something she had never said to him before, but she means it. "I love you."

This time Nicholas does take, just one deep, searing kiss. When he pulls back he's panting as if she's stolen his breath away - she has - and his eyes are burning, gazing so intensely into her own blue ones. "I love you, Sabrina Spellman. You are... the only thing that has kept me sane for the past millennium."

She gives him a questioning look at that, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. "Millennium? It's only been two years?"

The sad smile Nick gives her makes her heart break, just one more time. A small crack, large on her already shattered pieces. "Time moves differently in Hell..." he looks behind her, into the house where Salem sits on the staircase. "Can I come in? Tell you all about it?"

This is how, on the first hour after the start of Sabrina Spellman's eighteenth birthday, she comes to find herself in her room with the boy she has loved so deeply and distantly for the past two years. On her bay window seat lies a parchment of paper that she won't find until morning, when Nicholas is gone from her side. Salem knows to stay out of the room, but for now, the two of them lie together in each others embrace.

"Will you start now?" she whispers into the skin of his chest, her fingertips lightly running over the bare skin, up and down in a soothing manner. To calm herself or him, to ground herself or him, she doesn't know.

"I-" Nick cuts himself off, clearing his throat. "Lillith spent... decades, at least, creating and perfecting Lucifer's cage."

"She made a cage for him?" Sabrina cuts in, lifting her head from Nick's chest to look him in the eyes.

The boy nods down at her. "She said she wanted Lucifer to be her slave, like she had been for him. Chain him down and force him to live by her feet as she rules Hell."

Sabrina thinks to the statue depicting Lillith at the reformed Academy, with the goat sitting by her feet. On point, Aunt Zee.

"Satan broke out of a prison _designed_ after the human body, complexity and all. How did she-"

"She had thousands of years to design it, and she's the Mother of Demons. It only took time."

Sabrina sits up fully this time, gazing down at the boy laying down next to her. "Was it really thousands of years?" She asks quietly, feeling like the biggest letdown of the century, but Nick knows her and he sits up as well, hands grabbing her own and rubbing his thumb over the sides of her wrists.

"It isn't linear down there. It might've been. It feels like it should've been, but I am not sure."

"I'm sorry, Nicholas..." Sabrina trails off, wanting to look anywhere but his intense gaze while at the same time never wanting to look away again. She spent so long not looking at him, she'll be damned - she already is - if she looks away anytime soon.

"It's not your fault."

She scoffs, because it kind of is. It most definitely is. She says as much.

"No it's not, Spellman," Nick rolls his eyes and pulls her closer to him, so much so that she's practically sitting on his lap - in her nightgown, might she add - but she doesn't mind. He settles his hand on her hips and rubs a soothing thumb over the silky gown, over her hip bones. "You didn't ask for the apocalypse to happen."

"True," she mumbles, one palm laying flat against his bare chest and the other one lightly running through the hair at the back of his neck. She was going to say that the apocalypse wasn't really what she was apologizing for, that she was apologizing for giving up on him literally like... three days ago. But his hair distracts her - more like she looks for a distraction so she doesn't have to admit that - so her eyes roam from his face to his hair, and she tugs on the ends. His eyes flutter at the action, hands gripping her hips just a little bit tighter, and she says "Your hair is longer."

"Yours isn't." He looks at the ends of her hair, still level with her chin. "I'm glad. Long hair is weird on you."

She thinks back to the play that was so long ago. Thinks to the brown wig that Aunt Zelda produced for her role. If Dorcas had remained Lillith there would've been no need, but her short white hair wouldn't have been good for the role. "Can I cut your hair?" she asks. She doesn't know why she asks. Maybe she wants to be there for him. Do this for him since he's already done so much for her. She doesn't know.

"It's that bad?" he laughs, so she laughs too.

"No... okay," she gives at the look he gives her, "maybe just a little bit."

A lot a bit. Long hair didn't suit him, like it didn't suit her. "Not right now, though," she mummers when they lean in towards each other instinctively, eyes lidded and noses bumping each others.

"Later, then," he agrees, his arms wrapping around her waist to hug her close to him, dipping in to kiss her sweetly.

It's like finally breathing air after holding it for so long, while simultaneously drowning, she thinks. It's full of love, and maybe that's the drowning part. She doesn't know. She doesn't think on it.

They don't do anything for the rest of the night, choosing instead to lie wrapped up in each others arms. Aunt Hilda will be surprised when she comes to rouse Sabrina up from sleep, and she might be wary and maybe a little bit angry, but the white-haired girl finds that she doesn't care. She can't care, not when Nick holds her so closely like she'll float away if he doesn't.

She wakes up before him, only a couple hours later, after the witching hour. He sleeps peacefully that first night, and maybe it's because she watches over him. She does nothing but watch him, as the night creeps into dawn. She traces the lines of his face with her light fingers and she memorizes his face all over again.

Sabrina Spellman is not fine. She won't be for a while, her heart will still take time to mend itself together while under the heavy weight of her guilt, but eventually, sooner rather than later, she will be fine.

She finds the note left on her window seat, a scroll out of place. She opens it to read it, and sees handwriting she'd never seen before.

' _Lucifer had said he could give you power, and many of you believed him. But you were never his children. You are mine. I am the first witch there ever was. I am the Mother of Demons._

_Happy eighteenth birthday, Sabrina Diana Edwina Spellman. This is the third gift I had for you. Your teacher was merely a coincidence. I've returned Nicholas Scratch nearly in the same condition you left him in. I apologize it took me so long, but Lucifer doesn't like to go down without a fight._

_You are welcome to visit, I've done a lot of redecorating. Tell Zelda Spellman that I liked her statue of me._

_Yours, The Queen of Hell._

_Lillith.'_

**Author's Note:**

> ok so I wrote this MONTHS ago, like around October, and after a comment or two I've just realized that the show finally came out with part 3???? So... anything written here has no knowledge of anything in the show after Nick sacrifices himself to be the cage. I'm clueless. I'm so sorry lmao


End file.
